Jungle Laws
by The Ferryman
Summary: in which Taylor reads from her mother's books, and decides to confront Sophia instead of leaving matters to Regent, Miss Militia has a rough start to leadership, Battery plays detective, and people take turns dressing up as Skitter.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Worm. Several timelines were twisted to make things line up in a nice and tidy package, I am aware. With thanks to Rudyard Kipling and Dave Grossman. Please enjoy responsibly.**

* * *

I shouldn't have come home.

Odd, that. The loft, my lair, felt more home than the house I'd shared with my Dad did, but I still thought of it as home.

As much as I wanted, maybe even needed, to reconnect. Now really wasn't the time.

A traitorous little voice so much like Lisa's asked when the right time was.

I'd been more than a little relieved to find him not at home. But then, instead of all the normal things I could have done, the stuff they do in the movies like visit my room (my bugs already confirmed that nothing had been moved) or sitting in the kitchen with a mug of tea, I'd gone down into the basement.

I wasn't sure why I'd opened the box. Even when I'd used the basement to weave my first costume all those months ago, Mom's books had remained in their stacked boxes where they had been since her death. A volume of Kipling's complete verse was on top and I'd pulled it out, flipping through the musty pages. If Gallant could have been around to tell me what I was feeling he'd probably have been as confused as his victims had been.

I found 'If', holding the book open with one hand under the spine as I began to read. But then the pages flipped over. A laminate card, stiff, like a professional ID, had been used as a placeholder and the pages naturally flopped so the book was open to the marked page.

P.O.E.M.

Professional Organization of English Majors

The usual biographical details and picture filled in beneath it. A joke turned into a project the month before she died.

Dad would be home soon, and it wouldn't do for him to catch me here. Not like this. Not now. But there was time for one poem, and she'd marked this one…

" _NOW this is the Law of the Jungle, as old and as true as the sky…_ "

* * *

Emma balked at the top of the stairs.

I gave her a none-too-gentle shove but held onto her arm so that her stumble didn't turn into a neck-breaking fall. At the bottom, I pulled the black sack off her head, but did not free her of the flexicuffs.

"Where are we?" she demanded.

It was…strangely good that she'd found the strength to ask that question.

"A basement," I replied, bugs buzzing my voice so she didn't recognize it. Perhaps it wasn't necessary, but then, maybe it was. "The house is one of many abandoned. The water didn't reach this high, the inhabitants haven't returned, and it has power, hence why we are borrowing it for this conversation."

"I have nothing to say to you." I shrugged and pushed her ahead of me to a side room.

Sophia Hess was wrapped up in bright orange extension cables. They were tight enough that she couldn't really move much, and enough slack was left that what little movement she could make didn't risk pulling them out of the sockets.

"Sophia?" Emma asked.

Sophia's eyes widened as I sat Emma on a stool. Then she glared at me over the gag in her mouth.

"I thought of using Christmas lights," I said. "But while efficient, I felt they would be needlessly humiliating." Emma probably had the best chance of seeing through my mask. There was something to be said for being the former best friend of a cape. Altering speech patterns, along with what I had planned for later, would help sell that I wasn't Taylor.

Sophia scoffed at me.

"W-Who are you?" Emma asked.

I tried not to sigh, because the odds of her _not_ knowing who I was (at least my cape-identity) were…non-existent, really. "My name is Skitter," I said, and she cringed hard enough she almost slid off the stool. Yeah, she knew it. "It is not a name I would have chosen for myself. I understand the Wards named me, however, and there is a certain substance to being named by one's enemies and so I have retained it.

"But speaking of names, I understand you know the _other_ name Sophia uses? Excellent, that will make this conversation much easier."

"And after that?"

"After that you go home, Ms. Barnes," I said. "My fight isn't with you."

"Then why am I here?"

"Taylor Hebert works for me," I said. Which was public and open truth, but we'd all taken care not to make it known quite this openly. "I don't pay her nearly enough as it is. But she told me the most interesting story when I asked why she was willing to work for me.

"So, if I can't give her more money, or better accommodations, or any of the material niceties that were once enjoyed while so many are going without even basic necessities, I thought I might offer her some piece of mind. Namely, how her best friend could abandon her for…that," I gestured towards Sophia, "in the span of two weeks at summer camp."

"I don't—"

I held up a hand. "You are here, Ms. Barnes, because I really would rather have a civil conversation. If you would prefer I pump you full of a truth serum and sit you down in front of Taylor, I can do that instead."

"Truth drugs don't work," she said.

"Tinker-designed," I shrugged. "It won't guarantee the actual 'truth,' of course. But it will tell us what you believe the truth to be. Your choice."

It took more than half an hour for Emma to work her way through the terrifying details. How Shadow Stalker had saved her from those details from being even worse. How I'd been more than a hundred miles away at camp.

Even in the aftermath when she had needed a friend and had…Sophia.

When she finished, I—or rather, Lisa through the earpiece I was wearing—asked a few probing questions to draw out and refine some details.

Satisfied, I went to Sophia and used a knife to cut away the binding on her gag. The wad of cloth came out and she lunged and tried to bite me.

"I expect it to be too much to hope for a little wisdom, you probably used your natural allotment on your name," I said dryly.

"Fuck you!"

"Pass."

"Please," Emma asked. "What are you going to do to her?"

Sophia stared at her, darted a quick look at me, then back to Emma. I couldn't blame her. I had been staring at Emma too, and it was Lisa who told me about Sophia.

"I want this over with," I said. "I want Shadow Stalker out of my life, and Sophia Hess out of Taylor's. If she resigned from the Wards, or requested to be transferred, it'd be just about perfect. But if she'd prefer to go back to her ineffectual attempts at capturing me, while I continue to ignore her, we can play it that way too. And the next time she bothers Taylor, she won't have Blackwell and the tacit support of the PRT covering for her when we hand Sophia over to the police."

I turned back to Sophia. "You can participate, or I'll slap a mask on you, give you that truth serum I mentioned, video you as I ask about far more than one Saturday afternoon, and post the tape online for everyone to see."

"Confession given under duress—"

"I don't really care if the PRT and Protectorate listen to it," I said. "The point is to destroy public trust and confidence in you. The Wards will drop you in a hot minute just to protect themselves from your bad PR."

I gave that a moment to sink in, and ignored Lisa intoning 'plata o plomo' in a bad Spanish accent.

"Fine," Sophia grated.

"How long were you watching Emma before you decided to actually help?"

I could have used the look she gave me to boil water for tea, and her jaw worked furiously before she managed to grate out: "Fuck. You. You. Bitch." A bit rich coming from her, I thought. "I don't have to answer your fucking questions."

"Fair enough," I said. "My next question is—"

"Wait," Emma said. "That's it?"

"Yes."

"But…" her voice trailed off.

"But?"

"Truth…serum?" she asked awkwardly.

I shook my head. "I only require participation from her. If she would rather sit there and glare at me rather than give a constructive answer, that is perfectly sufficient," I said.

"But…" Emma's expression was one of pure confusion. "I don't understand."

"Then let me clarify," I said. "I can give her a serum and force her to give answers, to the best of her knowledge, to questions I ask of her. Or I can simply ask her questions about the afternoon you already described."

"Without a truth serum," Emma said.

"Yes," I said. "However, it is not just _me_ she is addressing her answers to. Is it?"

Emma's eyes went very wide at this and darted a look at Sophia.

Sophia's expression was…comical. It was too fucking bad I was going to have to destroy any recording of this conversation because there was likely a list of people she had stepped on who would fork over not inconsiderable sums to get a copy.

"You…you bastard. You _bitch_. I'll rip your fucking heart out!" she screamed, writhing in the extension cords.

"Sophia," I said in a dry voice. "I have several buckets of water. You are wrapped in live extension cables. If you cannot keep a civil tongue, or at least restrict yourself to no more than your usual incivility, I will pour one on you."

Sophia and Emma were both staring at me.

"So, once again. How long were you watching Emma before you decided to actually _help_?"

"Long enough to see that Emma was a fighter."

A fighter? She used to go on a crying jag if she chipped a nail, and Mom's death had almost hit her harder than it'd hit me. On the other hand, there were many things Emma did well. She could make burlap the hot new fashion trend, and she was great with people. People just liked her. As hard as she'd tried over the last two years, I was probably one of less than a handful who truly hated her, and that had taken a vicious stab in the back, destruction of my mother's flute, throwing her death in my face, and the fucking locker.

And, I was coming to realize, hating was hard work. It took a lot of energy and time to hate someone properly. Easier to hate when there was someone around to keep up the momentum. Looking at her now, the month of absence had robbed that hatred of momentum. Now I just felt…apathetic where Emma was concerned.

I looked at Sophia. Nope, still a deep burning hatred.

Huh.

I turned back to Emma. "I doubt that. Maybe in extremis you could have struggled. Maybe. Maybe not. You were like a little lamb bearing its throat for the knife when I took you."

"You, however…" I said as I turned back to Sophia. "You are a fighter. Standing on that car, you had to have seen she had not the training, instincts, or personality for it. Where do you get off— In what world do you live in that it is acceptable for a 'hero' to leave a civilian in a situation like that? Or did you want to watch her be taken?"

"Sophia isn't like that!" Emma protested. "She never would have stood by and watched someone be raped."

"Who said anything about rape?" I asked. "I said taken, and I meant it. Literally. They would have gotten you hooked on drugs, and used you to staff their brothels. The rape came later. Lung used to do it to his own people when they, or their boyfriends, or their families, pissed him off. It was the ABB's thing."

I turned back to Sophia. "Was that it? You were going to use her as bait to find one of their brothels?" Lisa whispered an alternative, "or did you get off on it? Does watching make you wet…or is seeing it in their eyes when the full realization of what you saved them from hits home?"

I had thought Sophia's skin was too dark to pale, but she managed.

Huh. So… That's what it's like to be Tattletale. I could definitely see the appeal, but all the same I'm grateful that I don't have her power. I wondered sometimes if Lisa didn't enjoy it too much. I know, watching Sophia, that I would have.

Emma turned an unappealing shade of gray.

"I fought," she said, but it came out a strangled whisper, half-believed in at best.

"All you did was make matters worse," I said. "They beat you?"

Emma jerked a nod.

"Well, for fighting them you got yourself beaten. And once their tempers had cooled, your situation would have been the same, and they'd still be angry. Your fate, had Sophia not intervened, would have been worse."

"How could it possibly have been worse than…that."

"They could have not bothered with the drugs, before chaining you in that brothel I mentioned," I said. "They could have found a family member and made you watch as that person was put in your place instead. Lung was an expert in making things worse for others." At the time, making his crotch rot off had been an accident caused by someone else, and blinding him had been necessary for my own survival. Having learned just what a monster he was, neither of those bothered me anymore.

I leaned forward slightly in an attempt to build rapport with Emma. "I understand that you were in an untenable position. Your best options were bad, but you chose a worse option…but only because Sophia didn't intervene."

I tracked back to Sophia. "Would you have intervened at all if she hadn't fought?"

If Sophia had been a blaster with eye-linked powers, I would have been dead. Assuming, of course, that I wouldn't have taken precautions against that. She struggled against the electrical cords, but that didn't go anywhere either.

"Ready for the next question?" I taunted her.

"Your question doesn't matter," Sophia snarled and me. "She fought! She's a survivor!"

And didn't that say everything?

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"The only ones who matter are those ones who fight, the ones who survive," Sophia said. "Everyone else is meat."

" _What?_ " I blurted. Hate giving way to an intense burning rage that carried through the droning buzz of my bugs far better than my shock had.

"Jungle rules," Sophia said, as though it answered everything.

Hot fury flooded my veins. I choked on it, fought to be able to _breathe_ instead of scream in outrage. If I'd had any control of my body, Sophia would have died right there.

"Wait," I ordered, as the utter _rage_ ebbed slightly. I took a breath and it wasn't enough. I channeled the half-forgotten memory of Mom in 'lecture mode' and it made things a bit easier even if there was a soul-deep ache in my chest.

"You are saying that those who have and are willing to use physical force should be able to do…what, anything they want?"

Sophia shrugged as best she could. "Yeah, pretty much. I mean, it's not like the sheep matter."

"And your present circumstances?"

"Only means I got taken down by a bigger, badder predator," she said, her tone almost casual.

"And that's…jungle rules."

"Eat or be eaten. Survival of the fittest."

"But—"

"Seriously, Emma," Sophia cut her off. "This kind of thing happens between capes. We have to figure out where we stand with each other. We duke it out, take our lumps, heal, and now we know. Some do it again, and again, but I'm guessing Skitter is one of the one-chance capes." She gave me a sideways look.

"What about kids?" Emma said.

"What about 'em?" Sophia asked. "If a parent doesn't watch their brat, that's on the parent, not the kid. Sure you have to watch out, but it's no big. It's not like Kaiser walked around chopping up little kids."

"And me?" Emma asked in a small voice.

Sophia shrugged again. "Nobody expected you to win at those odds. Just needed to see if there was something worth saving or another sheep."

"It's not about being weak or strong," I interjected into the silence. Emma's was horrified by Sophia. Sophia's was confused by Emma. The irony would have been delicious if it wasn't revolting. "It isn't a matter of being a fighter, or a survivor, or not."

Both Emma and Sophia turned to look at me.

"Sophia is right in only one thing," I said. "Most people are sheep.

"Sort of cute and fluffy at a distance. It doesn't make them not worth protecting."

"Of course not. Need something for the villains to—"

"No," I said coldly. "In the grand scheme of things, capes are pretty irrelevant when you think about it. If all the Thinkers and Tinkers, Brutes and Blasters in the world haven't found a way to stop the Endbringers in thirty years, they probably never will. Panacea? Great healer, but even if she saves fifty lives a day for the next sixty years, which seems more than a little unreasonable, that's still, what, a million or so with a planet-wide population measured in the _bill_ ions. That might make a million success stories, but she's never going to make a personal impact on our species by doing something like coming up with a cure for cancer.

"The thing about all those sheep? They're useful. They are more useful than me or you. And the vast majority of whom can't do more than say 'baaa' when the butcher comes with his knife.

"At this point, if anyone is going to save us from the Endbringers and cancers of the world, it isn't going to be capes. It's going to be the ordinary scientists, crunching ordinary data. Slowly. Methodically. Until something gives. The people who will find a way to get us off this rock, the ones doing all the rebuilding, the ones finding a way to keep us going after thirty _years_ of Endbringers… All of them plain, ordinary humans."

"Them? Puh- _lease_."

"On the other side of the sheep are the wolves," I said over her. "The thing about the wolves, is that they listen to the sheep. They like to think they don't, but they do. But the sheep, well, they don't really understand wolves. They see something that isn't sheep, and has fangs."

"What the _fuck_ are you talking about?" Sophia demanded.

I sighed. "It's called a metaphor, Sophia." There was…no recognition in her eyes. Nothing. "I'm trying to teach you something. It's not your fault that the people who should have taught you fucked up by the numbers, but you have to live with the consequence of that fucking up so listen close and try to learn.

"You want to be a predator? Fine. Be a fucking wolf. Your problem is that you listen to the sheep and they tell you that the Law of the Jungle means it's everyone for herself. That anything goes. Dog eat dog. Might makes right. And that is all _bullshit_.

"Jungle Law, the true Jungle Law, is about obligation. It is what you owe to yourself. It is about what you owe your pack. And it is about what you owe to the rest of the fucking world.

"There are a lot of people calling themselves wolves that aren't wolves, Sophia. Not really. True wolves are damn few. But you want to know what keeps people like Emma safe at night? It isn't people like you or me.

"Call 'em the sheepdogs. To the sheep they look sort of like a wolf, and smell sort of like a wolf, so they call them wolves and treat them like wolves. But the thing about sheepdogs is that they know that even the most stupid sheep is infinitely more valuable than they are and will do their utmost to protect it.

"Your problem, the reason why you are here, is because you thought you were a sheepdog but you weren't. You were never anything but a wolf."

"I never hurt a civ," Sophia said.

"If Emma hadn't resisted, would you have still saved her?" I asked. "Where there civilians who you didn't save, that you just sat and watched be beaten, raped, kidnapped, or murdered? You know what that makes you? Complicit. It means you gave your tacit approval to every civilian who got hurt under your watch."

"Fuck you!"

I resisted the urge to sigh again as she spat curses at me. Instead I went, picked up one of the buckets, moved it closer to her and splashed some water on her face.

"You fucking cunt!"

I lifted the bucket and she froze. "Going to punish me now?"

"We agreed that I'm the bigger predator in the room. The meaner wolf."

She remained silent.

"Are you going to keep a civil tongue in your head?" She didn't reply so I set the bucket down.

"Just because you preyed on wolves, doesn't mean you aren't a wolf yourself," I said. "Oh, some of the best sheepdogs are those that could have been outstanding wolves, don't get me wrong. And more than a few wolves decide they'd rather guard the sheep than eat them. But restricting your prey to other wolves, standing aside and waiting for the sheep to struggle futilely before intervening and not lifting a finger to help those resigned to the knife…

"That's pure wolf. It's twisted as all hell, and self-destructive at heart. But underneath it all, still a wolf."

"What does that make you?" she sneered.

"A wolf," I said honestly. "I wanted to be a sheepdog. The other sheepdogs weren't interested. But that's on them, not me.

"The difference between you and me, or those villains like the Nine, I suppose, is that I care."

Sophia snorted.

"The Law of the Jungle means something to me. I understand what it means to have a Pack. I understand that it's about having standards I hold myself to. I understand that just because I have power, it doesn't give me the right to go and do whatever the fuck I want. It means when I have a problem, I settle it squarely. I don't escalate the situation if I don't have to, and I don't bring more people in. I don't try to make things worse. It means when I hunt, it's for a purpose, and not because I get off on the power. It means recognizing that because of my position, others can make claim to my talents and resources, and I am obligated to meet those claims to the best of my ability. I'm not perfect. Sometimes I err. Sometime my best just isn't good enough. But I learn. I improve.

"But you never learned any of that. Nobody ever taught you how to be a wolf. The ones who were responsible for making you a sheepdog, well, they fucked up to. But you never really tried to learn, either to be a wolf or be a sheepdog, and that's on you. That's all on you."

"You're wacked." She laughed, then, an ugly bitter sound. "Call it what you want. I'm a Ward. They'll send you to the Birdcage for killing me, and that's if you're lucky."

"I said I wouldn't kill you here," I said, standing. I drew one of her tranq-bolts out of my storage compartment. "Your problem, Sophia, is that for a wolf, you're insane. Rabid. That isn't your fault, no one taught you how to be better. And the Wards…they thought putting you through a sheepdog's paces and a place inside the barn was enough to civilize you. They forgot that a wolf, even if she's a sheepdog, is still a wild animal that needs to be watched until it's proven it can be trusted with the sheep."

She might have said more, but I drove the bolt into her left thigh.

"Would she have saved me?"

I looked at Emma. Somewhere, in trying to get through to Sophia, I had forgotten she was there. "I don't know," I said honestly. "What do you think?"

Emma shivered. "I think I don't want to know the answer to that question."

I said nothing.

"Could I…would it be possible for me to speak to Taylor?"

"You want me to set it up?" Lisa's voice whispered over the earpiece.

"Very well," I said.

* * *

The bag over Emma's head kept her from seeing where I took her. Even so, we didn't go to the lair. I wasn't certain what the building had originally been. There was a large open area, and on one end a double-stacked warren of small rooms, including a couple we'd set up as offices.

Charlotte, wearing a hoodie, slacks, and a full-face mask, sat in another room with Emma while Lisa pulled on one of my older costumes, with the plates strapped on and my mask over a brunette wig she'd picked up somewhere. She looked passable, I guess. It helped that the lighting wasn't the greatest and that she was sitting behind a desk with her lower body hidden. Even so, the chair was higher than I knew she liked.

I changed into clothes Lisa had brought with her and put my hair up.

When I knocked on the wall, Charlotte led Emma in. Nodded to me, then—" I wasn't sure if she realized the slip, or if the clothes were irrelevant to her in the situation "—Lisa-Skitter, and left.

Emma stood in the doorway staring at me.

"Emma," I said coolly.

"Taylor! I, uh…" She stalled out.

"If you came looking for forgiveness, I don't know that I have any to offer," I said evenly. "You threw Mom's death in my face. Told Sophia to destroy her flute."

"That's…that's fair, actually," she said.

I think she managed to surprise herself at least as much as she surprised me with that.

"We talked, or rather, Skitter talked…it was hard."

I looked at Lisa who shrugged slightly as I made the bugs around her buzz softly.

"She is…Sophia is very … driven."

"She needs to win," I said. "She doesn't want conflict, or to fight, not really, since both chance losing which she can't tolerate. She needs to dominate."

"Yes."

"Did you like it?" I asked. "The bullying?"

Emma looked away. "I was…attacked, while you were at camp. The ABB." For the second time I listened as she spilled all the details out. It was quicker this time. She looked at me, almost defiantly. "She saved me."

"Ah."

"She…" Emma managed a soft sob. "I craved the stability, and security, no…I needed the safety I thought she represented."

"She respects those who use power the way she does…or who free her to act to her urges. Armsmaster, the PRT director, enabled her."

"Maybe," Emma said. "Probably. She thought I was strong. A survivor."

"What do you think?" I asked.

"I think that something I once held dear was injured in that alley…and I let it die because admitting it hurt too much."

"I think you're right."

We had another one of those long silences.

"What now?" she asked.

"I have a few matters to discuss with Skitter, but I'm spending the rest of the afternoon trying to reconnect with my Dad," I said as I stood. "You…do whatever the hell you want."

"I…okay," she said.

I motioned her out the door, and made Lisa's bugs buzz. "Bring Charlotte back with you."

We went next door and I motioned to Charlotte. "Boss wants us both." She nodded and slipped past us. "Emma, wait here," I said.

"Okay."

I turned, paused, and looked behind me. "Get some professional help. I'd tell you to move away if you could convince your father to do it. But at the very least get yourself a therapist and work through some of that bullshit you told me. Get over the attack. Whatever."

"What's going on?" Charlotte asked as soon as I closed the door of the office.

"Your turn to play Skitter dress-up," I said.

"What? Wait, really?"

"Yes," Lisa said.

"I need you to distract Emma," I said. "Keep her here, in your presence, for as long as you can. Also, be prepared to make a call to the PRT."

"But my voice, they'll see right through it, and I don't look anything like you."

"Sit. Play card games. Sitting down it's harder to get a read on people's size," Lisa said.

"Just talk softly. I'll buzz your words," I added.

"Wait, does this mean I'll have bugs in my hair?" she asked.

I raised an eyebrow pointedly.

* * *

"Dad," I said.

"Taylor," he said evenly. The temper he so fondly believed he kept hidden was barely held in check.

Coin toss to see which of us would go first.

"What happened this last month?"

"Nothing that hasn't been happening for years," I said.

"Years?"

"September, freshman year, first day of school. The day Emma stabbed me in the back. Years."

He deflated a little at that. He deserved it, he failed to protect me. He didn't deserve it; the Administration was on Hess' side.

"Have you been questioned yet?" I asked

"Questioned?"

"By the PRT, the police…" he stared at me and I shrugged helplessly. "I'm associating with a super-villain after all."

"I can't believe you said that."

"Believe it."

He didn't reply.

"I want to know if we can still be a family," I said.

He started to reply, but I interrupted him.

"With this…new dynamic," I said. "I can't go back to what it was."

"Was it so bad?"

"I don't know," I said. "I do know that I'm needed here. I'm doing good work."

"For a villain," he said.

"Who is keeping the area _safe_ ," I said. "People here have food, water, power, safety… It isn't Skitter's responsibility, but she's doing it anyway. I'm helping. I'm making a difference for those people. It…"

I sighed then. "It isn't pretty. It isn't what I would have chosen. But it's mine."

"Okay," he said. "Fair enough. So what now?"

"I don't know. I thought by this point we'd be screaming at each other."

He smiled a little then.

"Okay," I said, taking a breath. "With the topics of me returning to home, and school, off the table, at least for now. Let's…talk. See where it goes from there."

"Okay. Why a villain?" he asked. "Why not work for a hero?"

"Where are the heroes?" I asked dryly. "But, in all seriousness. She didn't want to be a villain."

"Really?"

"She met some heroes, they were dicks. You've seen pictures?" he nodded. "Well, her first costume came out edgier than she'd intended. It's spun spider silk. Changing it would be neither easy nor quick. Some people saw it and leapt to conclusions. Others didn't offer her the kind of support she needed when she was starting out. Villainry seemed to happen from there. It is, apparently, an altogether too common of a narrative."

* * *

Lisa, dressed in a hazmat suit, walked into the basement where Sophia was bound.

She kicked Sophia onto her back, then pressed a hand over Sophia's mouth and nose.

Sophia came to with a rush.

"Go intangible," Lisa ordered.

Sophia didn't respond. Her mind still addled by the drugs and abrupt return to consciousness, as well as the incongruous figure kneeling next to her.

"The power is off. Go intangible now!

The cables fell as gravity exerted its influence now that Sophia Hess' body no longer interposed itself.

"Wha— Who are you?" Sophia managed.

Lisa lifted her left hand, the one that had held a taser.

* * *

"Miss Militia?" I buzzed. I was in the bathroom for privacy so I could concentrate. It'd been…not easy, but not as hard as I thought to mimic Charlotte, but since I was doing the speaking and not simply modding a voice, I needed more concentration. For the same reason I'd dumped my emotions into the insects around my house. A particularly brassed off swarm of bumblebees was patrolling flower beds, and a couple of ant colonies were going to do a Yogi Bear-with-a-picnic-basket impression on a barbecue if I didn't get back to Dad and take all my emotions back.

Charlotte had dialed the number Lisa had given her, and Emma was sitting across from her. I was doing all the talking for this. Having the bugs mimic what she said was easier, especially since I was also talking with my Dad, but there was too good a chance that some tinker-tech BS program would notice a difference in speech patterns.

"Speaking," the voice was terse, but not harsh.

"This is Skitter. I am sitting with Emma Barnes playing cribbage," the kids had been convinced to move on. Charlotte played cribbage, I didn't, and so she had been teaching Emma and two of the older teens. "And have been for several hours. Earlier, Sophia Hess made a nuisance of herself with several people who lost everything they had in the recent unpleasantness.

"I could have summoned the police. Since they are overworked as it is, I instead chose to involve Emma and have a brief discussion about the lack of wisdom in revisiting their scholastic habits. You will find Sophia trussed with extension cords and sleeping off one of her tranquilizer bolts at the following address."

I waited for Miss Militia to repeat it back to me.

"Good day," I said, and Charlotte reached out and ended the call.

* * *

Sophia rolled over and looked up at me. "I knew it! I knew you wanted a second shot at—"

"No, Sophia," I said.

"Then why are you—"

"I _told_ you," I interrupted, sick of it all and very, very tired.

She sneered at me, "You and your precious law are—"

"You're a poor hero. You're a terrible human being. And you're a rabid wolf."

I shot her a bit above the right eye.

* * *

"What do we know?" Miss Militia asked.

Battery sat across from her in her improvised office. The younger woman's power was useful. The stability she had brought to her partner (and husband, though that had come later), even more so. But there were times, and now was one of them, that Miss Militia considered the kitchen-table lessons her police detective father had given her on law-enforcement in general, and criminal investigation in particular, to be one of the greatest assets the Protectorate ENE possessed.

"We found the residence; Shadow Stalker wasn't present. There were extension cords in the basement. We took video, and two Thinkers have independently verified that someone was bound inside them, and that they collapsed through the person and were not just staged that way.

"Epithelial cells on the cords match Shadow Stalker. Those on a chair match Emma Barns. There are some indeterminant hairs that may or may not be a match for Skitter. The other samples either match the owners of the residence as determined by samples gathered throughout the house or are too degraded to be of use."

"What about power? If she was bound with electrical cables—"

"Power to the area was lost before we arrived."

"So she went intangible and the cables fell through her."

"That is my guess."

Miss Militia nodded slowly. "Did you interview the other girl? Emma Barnes?"

"I did," Battery grimaced. "The good news, I suppose, is that she can confirm she was with Skitter from earlier this morning to until I called her cellphone requesting an interview—Skitter actually said hello—which was after we failed to recover Shadow Stalker. She, Emma, indicated that she'd been with Skitter since that morning and they'd left Sophia alive. There were a couple of gaps, none more than five minutes or so. And that Skitter's base seemed far enough away by travel time that it was well outside Skitter's estimated range. That isn't absolute, Emma was blindfolded, but..."

Battery shrugged, made a soft noise, and consulted a flip-style notepad.

"I also talked with Taylor Hebert and her father."

"Why them?"

"After visiting Sophia, Skitter brought Emma to visit Taylor. The two stayed together after Taylor departed. Taylor spent all afternoon with her father."

"I see." Miss Militia sat back. "You said 'good news.' Am I to assume this is the part where you tell me the bad news?"

Battery grimaced. "This situation is so fucked up…" she shook her head. "I have a lot of facts that I'm still stringing together, and more supposition. I also have a lot of leads I need to pursue, or I would if we weren't in the middle of recovering from an Endbringer. But if I'm right, we created Skitter. And I mean that in the most literal sense."

"You mean—"

"I mean a member of the Protectorate, or more specifically a Ward, caused her to trigger. And that the PRT, through oversight of a Ward at Winslow High School, ignored the misbehavior of said Ward, and did nothing to intervene."

"But—"

"Barnes and Hebert both independently testified about the bullying. Hebert had some circumstantial evidence that she passed me copies of, and her father had even more to say. There are a couple of incidents that are certainly bad enough to have been potential triggers, though neither lines up particularly well with Skitter's first appearance.

"As I said, I have a lot of leads that I need the pursue if we really want to nail this down," Battery flipped a page. "But…given what we know of Skitter, and her timeline, I think she was the one who called in that Lung was going to murder kids back in April and that she chose to intervene."

"I remember, Armsmaster brought him in. There was some complication that severely risked Lung's life. You aren't suggesting he took credit for her capture?"

"Spider venom, a lot of it, I'm almost positive," Battery said, instead of answering the question. "Panacea was called in to heal him. Following up with her is on my to-do list. Armsmaster's tranquilizers would have slowed Lung's regeneration. And…" the Detective looked up, not the cape, and just for a moment she lapsed into the familiar: "Ethan is good with kids, Hannah. Colin is…not."

Miss Militia seldom allowed herself to dip into her adopted culture's plethora of invective. She rarely felt compelled to use that of her native language. For a moment both seemed utterly inadequate.

"You said both Skitter and Taylor Hebert were seen at the same time by different people? How can they then be the same person?"

"A shell game," Battery said. "How do you know Bruce Wayne isn't Batman?" She had to briefly explain the reference.

Miss Militia nodded slowly. "You think she extracted Shadow Stalker from the residence?"

"I think if she went to the effort of establishing alibies for both of her identities, she probably has the connections to arrange a power-loss and extract someone without leaving evidence or being witnessed," Battery said.

"But apparently this 'being seen' type of thing is somewhat typical for Skitter, and Taylor's father indicated they had been estranged for almost two months and today they met to try and work out some of their issues. She could have created the cover just to free herself for that. God knows there aren't any good classes on how to manage secret identities. Most of us seem to fuck up repeatedly at the start."

Miss Militia nodded slowly. She'd known she was going to hate being a Protectorate leader…

* * *

"Such boastings as the Gentiles use, or lesser breeds without the Law…"

I let the song drift away. I wasn't much religious at the best of times, but Mom had liked Leslie Fish's setting. I don't know why I'd thought it appropriate, but now it struck more than a little too close to home.

Differing interpretations of Law, I suppose.

I'd already called out to the crabs, they were on their way so I didn't need to stick around, and once they began feeding, more would congregate. In a few days I'd come out and have them scatter her bones across the bay, buried deep under the muck the way they'd already carried off and buried the casing.

The bullet was small-caliber and soft lead. It hadn't left her skull. Getting a ballistic match would be a matter of luck and the right hand of fortune directly interceding. Death had been as close to instantaneous as possible.

A tarp had caught what little spatter there was, and would go into one of the burn-barrels some of the harder hit areas were using to keep warm at night. The deck and walls had already been sprayed down and would be again once we docked. I'd washed my hands in the frigid ocean, and then again in the warmer fresh water in the boat's head.

Lisa had procured the weapon. It'd been taken from a local home that had been abandoned during the evacuations and had already passed through at least ten hands. She would insure it passed through more so that Taylor would be one of a faceless multitude if a postcog got it into her mind to backtrack. Someone who could say they procured a weapon out of reasonable fear for their safety, and sold it the next day realizing the fears were groundless since her employer (who also happened to be Taylor) and said employer's friends would be…collectively unhappy if anything were to happen to her. It was even true, now that the potential threat had been neutralized. If Lisa hadn't twigged, it was fair to assume even Armsmaster's lie-detection program wouldn't.

Now we were watching the sun set behind Captains' Hill as we moved towards shore.

"Now Chil the Kite brings home the night that Mang the Bat sets free."

"Kipling. Yet again," Lisa said. "Do you quote anyone else?"

I'd been trying to decide between Shakespeare, Macaulay, and Tolkien before Leviathan, but had never found a really appropriate place for any of them.

"I would have done it," Brian said. "She was…she was as close to pure poison as I ever hope to see." Since the town had once included the spiritual successor to the Nazi's, that pretty much said it all.

Regent was lazing on the bow, and I don't think I'd ever been so thankful that his natural indolence took him out of the conversation.

Lisa and Rachel didn't say anything. Ironically, for once Rachel's understanding of dogs gave her much the same answer as Lisa's intuition. But that reminded me of another quote, Heinlein this time, just to tweak Lisa. It wasn't perfect, but in a way, it was.

"When the need arises — and it does — you must be able to shoot your own dog. Don't farm it out — that doesn't make it nicer, it makes it worse."

Sophia wasn't mine, not the way the quote suggested. But she'd made Skitter, and she and Shadow Stalker were fixated on me…both of me. She and I were both wolves, maybe in some universe we could have both been sheepdogs. But in this world, there was something broken, something cancerous in her, some kind of soul-deep rot that even Panacea couldn't have fixed. And because of that duality, that kinship, the Law had decreed her death and she had been my wolf to put down.

"What was it she was going to say, about your law?"

I looked at Rachel. "My Mom was a literature professor. It comes from a poem she used to read me. Sophia was a Ward. She was supposed to be a hero. And that…still matters to me. More than I thought. Even after…well…" I shrugged. "I thought, hoped, I'd get through to her."

"You didn't."

Pure Rachel.

I looked out over the water, and unlike 'Recessional,' the words came easily.

"NOW, this is the Law of the Jungle, as old and as true as the sky, / And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die."

Lisa spoke up, "As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back; / For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack."

"Wash daily from nose tip to tail tip…"


End file.
